This weekend, barrel-chested fighters faced off with each other in Macau, surrounded by ringside, bikini-clad girls and an audience of over 8,000 people at the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s inaugural fight in greater China. Long popular—and controversial—in the West and countries like Japan, mixed martial arts, a sport U.S. senator John McCain once famously derided as a kind of “human cockfighting,” is now making inroads in mainland.

While mainland China has yet to see the same kinds of no-holds-barred arena fights that helped make the sport famous in the United States, MMA is gradually getting popularized through live fights held in Hong Kong and Macau, which are followed by millions of Chinese fans both through TV broadcasts and online. UFC says that they have a broadcast reach of 450 million TV viewers in mainland China, while Legend Fighting Championship, a Hong Kong-based company that’s held 10 events since its founding in 2009, says their events are broadcast in a dozen provinces and have a reach of over 600 million Chinese viewers.

Advertisement

“China is slowly but surely catching up to the MMA wave,” said Mark Fischer, who helped promote the National Basketball Association’s growth in China and currently heads UFC Asia. The company is close to developing a Chinese version of a reality TV show that would showcase fighters competing for a UFC contract, such as the Ultimate Fighter show that helped popularize the sport in the U.S., UFC chairman Lorenzo Fertitta said in an interview.

The goal in China, company executives say, is to eventually find a Yao Ming of the sport, someone who can help catapult MMA into the limelight in China. To do so, Legend Fighting Championship co-founder Mike Haskamp says the company has been scouting across the country, hunting in gyms and at local wrestling competitions for the best candidates. To date, they’ve worked with some 20 Chinese fighters, he said, whose backgrounds hail from all over the map, including one fighter who used to work as an air conditioner repairman and security guard, and another fighter who owns a sex shop.

“We want to make these people into household names,” said Mr. Haskamp.

Over the weekend, Chinese fans had the chance to cheer for one of MMA’s most famous Chinese practitioners, Zhang Tiequan, who’s nicknamed “The Wolf” and appeared in Macau at UFC’s event against Guam-born fighter Jon Tuck. Prior to the face-off, Mr. Zhang, originally from inner Mongolia, told China Real Time he trains six hours a day to stay fight-ready. “Fighting is [in] our blood,” Mr. Zhang said. “I am always ready for any opponent. For sure I will be nervous before a fight,” but after going into the ring, he says, “I will forget everything and go forward.”

Social media sites lit up with frenzied commentary over the course of Mr. Zhang’s match, which ultimately ended in defeat, though fans still loyally thronged to his side. “China’s hero is still glorious, even in defeat — I will forever support you, grassland wolf,” wrote one Beijing-based fan on Sina Corp.’s Weibo microblogging platform. Video clips of Mr. Zhang’s past wins have gotten upwards of 100 million views, the company says, in a testimonial to his popularity in China.

Still, even as the Chinese market matures with the aid of fighters such as Mr. Zhang, don’t expect newly minted fighters to adopt the scandal-grabbing, insult-slinging attitude popular across the Pacific, says Mr. Haskamp. “There’s an ethos in American sport where trash-talking is part of the landscape,” said Mr. Haskamp. “Here, guys look at themselves as true MMA athletes—conveying a sort of warrior code [and] seeing it as a test of skill as opposed to getting in and smashing an opponent.”

Though UFC had a bad rap in the 1990s, thanks in part to its early tagline “There are no rules” — later replaced with the slogan, “As real as it gets” —the company subsequently responded with strict rules and safety procedures, said UFC’s Mr. Fertitta. “Since then, we’ve had an impeccable track record,” said Mr. Fertitta. “All the independent studies come back and say unequivocally that [MMA] is safer than most fighting sports, including boxing.” The worst injuries that have occurred since then include broken limbs, he said.

On the upper end, Mr. Fertitta said, UFC fighters can make six figures, while in the early stages, they can expect to earn anything between $10,000 and $30,000 per fight. While Mr. Fertitta said UFC pays its fighters according to their ability to win and draw fans, critics argue that the company’s fighters can be painfully underpaid, especially given how profitable the company has become.

Currently, 80% of UFC’s revenue comes from North America, and 20% from overseas, the latter which Mr. Fertitta expects to grow significantly in the coming years, especially as China’s market continues to develop. Already, the company says, in 19 major Chinese cities, awareness of UFC’s brand has gone up among those surveyed between the ages 15-54 from 25% to 50%.

“Historically, sports have had a hard time traveling between different cultures,” said Mr. Fertitta.“But the beautiful part of what we’ve had, and the reason why we’ve been so successful and reach nearly 1 billion people across the world is that our fights translate…You don’t need to explain a lot,” he said. “Fighting is in every country’s culture.”

Expert Insight

China’s territorial ambitions in the East and South China seas are by now well-documented. Much less understood is one of the key factors in the country’s ability to realize those ambitions: an increasingly well-funded and capable maritime militia.

The U.S. has been urging allies to steer clear of Asia's new China-led infrastructure investment bank. Robert Zoellick, former president of the World Bank, calls that approach mistaken on multiple levels.

Can legal reform and Communist Party control coexist in a way that will benefit Chinese governance and society?This is the question that confronts the country in the wake of its annual legislative gathering.

China's just-concluded legislative sessions seem to be another example of the deinstitutionalization of politics under Xi Jinping. Months from now, these meetings won’t be seen as harbingers of reform, so much as another lost opportunity, writes CRT analyst Russell Moses.

About China Real Time Report

China Real Time Report is a vital resource for an expanding global community trying to keep up with a country changing minute by minute. The site offers quick insight and sharp analysis from the wide network of Dow Jones reporters across Greater China, including Dow Jones Newswires’ specialists and The Wall Street Journal’s award-winning team. It also draws on the insights of commentators close to the hot topic of the day in law, policy, economics and culture. Its editors can be reached at chinarealtime@wsj.com.